Mortality

Something has been niggling at my brain about Cole for a few weeks. It finally hit me tonight while Cole and I were outside playing with some neighborhood kids.

Before Cole got sick, he always had this devil-may-care twinkle in his eyes. He just looked like he was up to something most of the time. This is the first picture I ever took with our digital camera, and it's a little old, but it portrays the idea I'm talking about:


Besides being adorably cute, doesn't he look like he's up to something?

Now, take a look at the picture that heads the top of the column on the right. I see a happy boy, but I don't really see the devil-may-care twinkle.

I was watching Cole interact with the neighborhood kids tonight, and a couple of them were riding scooters. Whenever they'd come riding by, Cole would crowd up to me on the sidewalk and kind of hide behind me. This struck me as a little different than Cole might have acted before he got sick.

I started wondering what the difference was, and it didn't take me long to arrive at the conclusion that Cole is somehow aware of his own mortality. I'm sure that that's not how he would think of it, but he's aware that things can go wrong. And, I guess they have for him at times.

So, with him hiding behind me on the sidewalk, I started thinking about how old I was when I think I realized that I was mortal. I was probably between 17 and 21. It seems sad to me that Cole should be aware of this at this age, and I can only hope that the realization fades.

I had a lot more I wanted to say, but it's kind of all out the window, now. I hope you can just read between the lines.